Though Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had feigned ignorance about the existence of Saradha chit fund before April 2013 when ponzi kingpin Sudipto Sen defaulted in payments to the depositors, downed his shutters and decamped with thousands of crores, CBI now probing the multi-crore fraud has stumbled upon records showing her Government had indeed been alerted repeatedly by various authorities of the ongoing non-banking fraud.

According to sources, then United Bank of India CMD Bhaskar Sen had raised the issue in a State level Bankers’ Committee of West Bengal conference attended amongst others by Finance Minister Amit Mitra.

Curiously, the investigators have also found that Mitra was accompanied in the meeting by jailed Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh who is one of the prime suspects in the case. Ghosh was the odd man out in the meeting as he had no locus standi to join the conference, insiders said. Apart from Ghosh, senior Government bureaucrats were also present in the meeting.

Sen had told Mitra in the meeting how the Saradha and other chit fund companies were looting the common people of thousands of crores and appealed to the Government through him to control these small non-banking units “looting the gullible poor by holding out false promises of astronomical returns against minor savings.” This incident took place in later half of 2012.

He had also informed Mitra about receding small-saving deposits in the State which usually held the number one slot in small-saving schemes. According to sources, while in 2011-12 Bengal had recorded Rs12,000 crore in small-saving deposits in banks and post offices while the figure slumped to a bare Rs157 crore in the next year. The Trinamool Congress came to power in May 2011. It was also reported how lakhs of agents had migrated to chit fund business lured by high rates of commission.

Incidentally, 95.20 per cent of Saradha’s income was recorded in its last three years of operation that largely coincided with the Trinamool regime. While before 2011, Saradha had amassed about Rs140 crore, but during the Trinamool regime it earned Rs2,316 crore employing about 16,000 workers.

“There is no explanation as to why Kunal Ghosh once a blue-eyed boy of Mamata Banerjee accompanied Mitra to the bankers’ meeting. He had no locus standi to remain present in the meeting. It is clear that he was sent with a leash to control Mitra so that he did not put something awkward on record,” says Pradesh Congress leader JP Majumdar.

The CBI sources also revealed that the arrested senior East Bengal Club functionary Debabrata Sarkar and businessman Sandhir Agarwal had worked as a go-between linking some top SEBI and RBI officials. CBI advocate said that Sarkar had revealed names of some senior SEBI and RBI officials who had played a role in facilitating Saradha’s business at his instance.

The CBI also reported that it had seized a laptop after grilling Bengal Transport and Sports Minister Madan Mitra’s former confidential assistant Bapi Karim. “We have found that his assets far outmatch his known source of income and we are trying to prepare a list of his properties and that of his relatives,” sources said.

Reacting to the latest development BJP State secretary Rahul Sinha said, “Whatever has been discovered by the CBI is just only the tip of the iceberg. More names are going to come. Soon the money trail will lead us to the top of the TMC hierarchy.”

Former CPI(M) MP Sujan Chakrabarty said, “Our party is keeping a close watch on who else are trying to influence the CBI probe. If investigation is carried out properly then soon quite a few senior police officers who formed part of the State’s SIT that hid facts more than investigating the case earlier will be hand-cuffed.”

Meanwhile, Congress leader Abdul Mannan spoke of plans to lodge a fresh case to locate people, documents that had allegedly been transported abroad with active connivance of the State Government and the SIT. “We are planning to seek directions for the CBI from the Court to put Interpol on alert so that these people and documents can be traced,” Mannan said.